| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Rooker: You said he was a good guy.
Mr. Paice: I did say that the Agriculture Minister is a good guy, and I shall say it again now that he is in the Chamber: he is a good guy--at least in the way in which he deals with his debates.
Nevertheless, if people really believe that the agency will be able to guarantee that food is 100 per cent. safe, expectations have risen far beyond that which is attainable by anyone, however clever he may be. Do Ministers accept that it is impossible to remove risk? Do they also agree that--as the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) said--it could even be undesirable to pursue the goal of removing risk, as that might render the population sensitive to all manner of ailments--[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) laughs, but he obviously does not know any science. If we remove the body's opportunity to develop its natural immunities, people become much more susceptible to ordinary ailments that they previously would have resisted.
Several hon. Members said that they believe that the advent of the Food Standards Agency will prevent further food poisoning outbreaks. I wish that were true.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Frank Dobson):
No one has said that.
Mr. Paice:
The right hon. Gentleman was here for the first speech, and that was that. I can tell him that that has been suggested by some of his hon. Friends. It is not an achievable objective. I do not believe that we are serving our constituents well by suggesting that if the Food Standards Agency had been in existence, none of the recent food scares or incidents would have happened. The hon. Member for North Cornwall called my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk "the Member for hindsight"--but we have seen far more hindsight from Labour Members tonight.
Many hon. Members have referred to the Meat Hygiene Service. The Government have said that the service should report to the agency, and yet maintain its identity as a discrete executive agency. However, we have no real explanation--despite the Minister's emollient words--about why the Government have rejected the view of the Committee that the two major roles of the MHS, regulation and enforcement, should be separated. I hope that the Government will take heed of what was said by many Members on both sides of the House and look again at their decision on the position of that service.
My hon. Friends the Members for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) and for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) referred to the possibility of appeals, and to the severe impact on small businesses and abattoirs--the hon. Member for South Derbyshire referred to a small cheese producer--if the agency used its powers in too draconian or overbearing a manner. I hope that the Government will look at the relevant mechanisms to provide some avenue of appeal before businesses are closed down by an over-zealous inspector.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk said in his opening speech, we would like the agency to have the same powers of control with regard to imported foods--a matter referred to by, among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh).
Why should food be allowed into the UK which has been produced to standards below those expected of food producers in this country? Why should foreign food be allowed into Britain, deliberately undercutting British food producers, whose hands are tied by stricter production standards?
Will Ministers agree to extend the powers of the agency? Obviously such powers cannot affect how food is produced abroad, but they can certainly affect what food is imported into this country, and whether it meets the standards demanded of domestic production. The Minister said nothing about the future of his own Ministry. I must ask whether this Bill, once enacted, leaves very much for it, and whether this is his swan-song. The Government have given Welsh farm policy to a vegetarian and Scottish farm policy to a Liberal. They are giving food policy to the FSA, and they are clearly intent on bankrupting thousands of farmers whose incomes have fallen by more than 70 per cent. since they came to power. We must wonder what is left for MAFF to do. What other goals does the Minister have? Did the Minister's mentor and namesake, the Chancellor, say, "Go to MAFF and get rid of it"?
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Jeff Rooker):
I will do my best in the time available to respond to as many points as possible.
On behalf of the Government and the House, I want to pay tribute to the work of the Special Select Committee. We understand the reasons why the Committee had such a tight timetable. We intended, if at all possible, to start to legislate in this Session, so everyone could work out the time constraints that we were under. The Committee did an excellent job, and the proof of that is that the Bill has changed as a direct result of the report and the evidence given to the Committee by outsiders.
We have heard 16 speeches from Back Benchers, with detailed and positive points, although there have been a few negatives. We must not lose sight of the ball itself: why the agency is needed. It was proposed by both Government and Opposition Members before the general election, to overcome the perceived contradiction of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, as the sponsoring Department of agriculture and the food industry, being the guardian of food standards and safety. We could not carry the public perception. That is why the agency is being set up.
In a way, MAFF is indeed two Departments. The hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) got it wrong, because there is no new bureaucracy here, although it is true that the agency will grow a little from the joint food standards and safety group. It is not generally appreciated
how much work goes on in MAFF. I freely admit that, having been a Member of Parliament for more than 20 years, I had no idea when I walked into the Ministry that there were the best part of 300 people in Ergon house and 70 in Skipton house dealing with food matters that are not dealt with by the local authorities.
The work done by MAFF includes that of the additives and novel foods division, which deals with all the issues of sweeteners, flavourings, colourings and chemical migration from packaging; the work of the food hygiene division, which deals with the research and scientific advice on the microbiological safety of food; work on milk and egg hygiene; the surveillance of the food contaminants division, monitoring natural toxicants, microtoxins, environmental contaminants and heavy metals; risk management work; studies of the scientific aspects of food contamination; the work of the food labelling and standards division; the policy studies of the meat hygiene division; the work of the radiological safety and protection of nutrition division; the work of the veterinary public health division; and work on food and welfare.
All that work is being done under central Government. My criticism of the previous Government is that, by and large, I never heard about it. I knew about BSE, E. coli, salmonella and the other crises. No one can criticise the technical and policy work driven by officials inside MAFF--it is second to none--but the public did not know about it because they were overwhelmed by the other work that MAFF had to do on, for example, the common agricultural policy and supporting farmers. The work got hidden away, and the Food Standards Agency is a way of bringing it to the fore.
There has been criticism of the research budget. We are simply transferring the existing budget. I do not get that many complaints. MAFF spends the best part of £130 million on research, out of running costs of less than £700 million. We estimate that about £25 million of that is directly related to food standards and safety. The Department of Health also does parallel work. The agency will have total control of the budget. At present, all the work is contracted out by tender, and even the work that goes in-house has to be fought for by MAFF agencies.
There has been some criticism of the Bill's drafting. I must not criticise the parliamentary draftsmen as I will have to work with them while the Bill is in Committee. The agency, as a quango, is different from all the existing quangos and agencies. It will function as a non-ministerial department and the Bill gives it the right to decide to publish whatever information it controls, and not only advice to Ministers. Obviously, there is a set of procedures to go through, but the agency, not Ministers, will have control. Freedom of information is built into the Bill. That is crucial to the transparency and openness of the agency's operation.
Hon. Members have spoken about the agency's independence from Ministers. It must not be independent from the House; it must report to the House. Its accounting officer will be responsible to the Public Accounts Committee. Any Select Committee can call in Government agencies and the Food Standards Agency will be the prime source of policy making, information and advice for all and sundry and for all Departments and outside bodies, including industry. Select Committees can
make inquiries as and when they want. Obviously, the independence of its members will be important and we will need some class people. It will not be a case of learning on the job. The agency will fully conform with the Nolan principles, and advertisements will be placed in the next few days.
I can tell the hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Morgan) why we are proceeding now, instead of waiting. Our original plan was to proceed last year, in advance of Scottish devolution. There is nothing underhand about the Government's actions. Until the House gives the Bill a Second Reading, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has no legal authority to advertise for the chair and deputy chair. We have the authority to set up the headquarters building, and that is not nugatory. However, we do not want to rush the process of appointment. Over the summer, we will have time to set the agency up with care.
The location of the headquarters will be central London. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) that Professor Philip James recommended that so that the agency was not marginalised from the rest of Government. We announced that important decision some time ago.
The vast majority of the staff will, I hope--and we are engaged in asking the staff their opinion--transfer from the joint food safety and standards group. There will be no compulsion and we will ask for volunteers. Those staff are the experts, who deal with the subjects I mentioned earlier. We will also need some 100 to 150 extra staff and we intend to bring people in from outside to dilute the culture. I believe that we are handing over to the agency a culture of openness and transparency in some of the policy changes that we have made in the past two years, but we can always do better. By diluting the MAFF and Department of Health culture with outsiders, we will move a little further towards that aim.
The meat hygiene charges cannot exceed the inspection service costs, as I hope hon. Members know. The levy has gone, but the Food Safety Act 1990 provides for a charge for the work of enforcement authorities. Treasury rules, however, mean that only the direct costs of enforcement can be recovered. The Bill contains no means to bring in a tax or levy in the way that was originally proposed.
I was not present for the contribution by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), but I was listening downstairs. He made a big point of saying that the agency will be able to do anything, but he did not finish the sentence, which reads:
"The Agency has power to do anything which is calculated to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to, the exercise of its functions."
That is an important qualification. The agency will not have free range: it will be constrained by the legislation and the guiding principles it contains.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |